Inmate erroneously released from Bexar County Jail

Updated 8:41 pm, Friday, May 3, 2013

A Bexar County Jail inmate who was supposed to be transferred to a state jail facility to serve an eight-month sentence instead was erroneously released this week — then apprehended again the next day.

The jail's “paper-based, antiquated” system is partly to blame, Sheriff Susan Pamerleau said Friday upon revealing the mistake to the media.

“That's not an excuse. That's a symptom of the issue ... of the way paperwork is processes and transferred,” she said. “More than 99 percent of the time this doesn't happen, but one time is not acceptable.”

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Jazmyne Bates, 25, who also went by the name Jazmyne Valerie, had been on probation for a state jail felony unauthorized use of a vehicle charge and for a separate misdemeanor theft case, according to court records and jail officials.

On Tuesday her misdemeanor probation was revoked by County Court-at-Law No. 9 Judge Walden Shelton and she was ordered to serve a 30-day term.

She was released the same day due to credit for time served.

But what deputies didn't realize was Bates' probation for the felony case also had been revoked — two weeks earlier — by state District Judge Sid Harle. That eight-month sentence still needed to be served.

Authorities realized the mistake the day after Bates' release and brought her back into custody two hours later, they noted. She will remains in local custody until her transfer to a state jail facility.

Prisoners have been erroneously released from jail before, including an incident in March 2012 in which an inmate set to serve a five-year sentence for a drug conviction was considered a fugitive for several days.

This week's release, however, is the first one under the watch of Pamerleau, who took office in January after ousting incumbent Amadeo Ortiz. Jail management was one of her top campaign issues.

Sheriff's officials still are trying to figure out how the earlier judge's order didn't get inputted into the jail's computer system for two weeks.

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Pamerleau said she plans to meet with other county officials in coming days to discuss immediate and long-term solutions.

While the jail and the courts have separate computer management systems, the two aren't integrated, she said. As a result, Pamerleau said, more than 100,000 paper documents were shuffled through Bexar County Jail in 2012.

One short-term solution, she said, might be for clerks to scan court rulings and email them to the jail.

“Really what we've depended on is what I've called the sneaker-net,” Pamerleau said. “Transferring paper is very inefficient.”